Cloud Procurement Lessons from Spend Matters and KPMG

A couple weeks ago, Spend Matters was joined by KPMG in a webcast that focused on cloud procurement, sponsored by Hubwoo. We were given free reign to focus on this big topic, so we tried to find a good mix of education, lessons from the trenches, challenges in the market, and what the future might hold. Specifically, we:

Provided a quick primer on cloud computing, SOA, and its relevance to procurement. Interesting factoid: a cloud service model such as SaaS or PaaS is different than a cloud deployment model (public vs. private vs. hybrid). In other words, don't assume that SaaS means a public cloud deployment.

Explained the “Bill of Rights” concept not just for SaaS, but for cloud Procurement

Performed two online surveys to gauge what the current state of procurement cloud deployment is, and also the biggest perceived barriers

Showed our procurement cloud service model, that depicts procurement organizations as XaaS providers and services solutions assemblers that then mix and match the spectrum of third party procurement cloud providers

Dove geekily into some architecture discussion surrounding the components needed to allow such plug-and-play capabilities amongst a diverse provider ecosystem

Went into the “Valley of FUD” regarding the cloud procurement market and how to hedge some of the risks that exist out there

Focused on how the cloud service and deployment models were converging into a virtual private cloud environment that we see increasingly taking hold

Closed with some Q&A on how to get more procurement ROI out of cloud-based services of all forms

There was only so much we could pack into an hour, but, if you wanted to sift through all of the marketing hype out there and get into some of the details of cloud procurement, I think you'll find the event worth your while.